Hail damage to automobiles and airplanes can be quite extensive. Hail storms, for example, have been known to cause considerable damage to unprotected vehicles that sustain hail impacts. Protective covers for vehicles are widely available to minimize hail damage. Unfortunately, few of these protective covers are capable of adequately protecting a vehicle from a serious hail storm. Many car covers are designed to protect a vehicle from sun, rain, snow, ice or even a light hail fall. None of these adequately protect from a severe hail storm.
The problems that exist with the present vehicle covers are that they are difficult, cumbersome and time consuming to set up. Also, once the cover is set up on a vehicle, the user cannot access entry into the vehicle. Thus, the vehicle is covered and protected, but the user is exposed to the hail storm and the inside of the vehicle is inaccessible. Other types of covers will protect only the top portion of the vehicle, so the sides of the vehicle are left exposed to the hail. Other inflatable covers do not provide the capability of preventing substantial deflation should part of the cover become punctured. Additionally, the covers that are presently used are bulky, unwieldy, difficult to handle and inconvenient to disconnect from the vehicle and fold and store when not being used.